1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to police enforcement tools and is particularly directed to tools for facilitating police in safely searching for illegal drugs and drug apparatus.
2. Prior Art
As is well known, drug interdiction has recently become a major activity of law enforcement organizations on federal, state and local levels. One of the most effective methods of accomplishing this is stopping and searching vehicles of suspected individuals. Unfortunately, this is an extremely hazardous operation. Aside from the fact that drug users and dealers are often armed and dangerous, when they are accosted by a police officer, they often try to hide the drugs and drug apparatus, such as hypodermic needles, in places where they believe the officer will not find them, for example, in crevices under or between furniture or vehicle seat cushions. Since the police are aware of this tendency, they try to search such areas by sliding their hand through such crevices. However, this exposes the police officer to a high risk of being stuck by such needles. This is especially dangerous, since it is well known that the hypodermic needles used by drug addicts are often shared by several users and are frequently contaminated. Furthermore, such shared hypodermic needles are known to be a leading source of AIDS infection and a police officer who gets stuck by such a needles runs a high risk of becoming infected by this disease. To reduce these risks, police officers often wear leather gloves, while making such a search. However, it is not uncommon for a hypodermic needle to penetrate through a glove. Consequently, the risk is still extremely high and no means has been proposed heretofore for reducing or overcoming this risk.